New game in town

Saturday

Nov 10, 2012 at 6:00 AM

By Susan Spencer TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

QR codes, those square-dotted bar codes that open up a page of information or “quick response” action when scanned by a smartphone, are everywhere these days. You find them on business forms, advertisements and at points of interest.

QR codes are also starting to crop up in unexpected places such as hanging in a pine tree or affixed to the underside of a railing in a park.

It’s revenge of the gadget nerds.

One of the latest things to do with a smartphone is to play Munzee, a hide-and-seek game in which people find and scan, or “capture,” game pieces containing a registered QR code. The person who captures the munzee game piece code automatically receives points. So does the person who hid, or “deployed,” the munzee.

The name Munzee comes from the German word Műnze, which means coin.

“The original idea was to use poker chips or coins” for game pieces, said Robert Vardeman, director of business and community relations for Munzee. “We settled on the fact that it would be easier for people to print their own QR codes on paper.”

Mr. Vardeman said that for reasons not totally clear to him, Germany was one of the first places the game really took off, along with California and Michigan.

This newcomer to geolocation games follows in the footsteps of geocaching, launched in 2000, in which participants search for hidden containers using handheld GPS units. And both games are 21st-century versions of letterboxing, the original geographic hide-and-seek game which uses written clues.

Veteran geocacher and MetroPCS cellphone technician Michael F. Mann of Millbury heard about Munzee in May at GeoWoodstock, a national gathering of geocaching fans.

Mr. Mann was intrigued by the prospect of being able to score a find inconspicuously by scanning a code with his phone, rather than having to root around for a hidden container and sign a geocaching logbook, often drawing stares from passers-by.

“I figured it was a good complement to get into the urban areas,” Mr. Mann said, who is a novice “munzer” but has found 965 geocaches with his wife, Maxine.

He’s enjoyed capturing a handful of munzees so far in the area, but he added, “I don’t think it’s worth walking two miles in the woods to take a picture of a bar code.”

Manny Orejola of Grafton, a tech support specialist for Cisco Systems, discovered Munzee in August while driving his daughter to college in Iowa. He wanted to stop in Le Claire, Iowa at the home of the History Channel’s reality TV series on antique collectors, “American Pickers.”

A geocache and letterbox are hidden in a Nash automobile there. Mr. Orejola, an avid geocacher, found the munzee QR game piece inside the hidden cache container.

“What’s this thing called Munzee?” he said he asked himself. “So I scanned it.”

He was immediately hooked.

Since then, Mr. Orejola has captured more than 100 munzees and deployed some 70 others, including “virtual munzees” at sites such as the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio and the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

The person who captures a virtual munzee doesn’t scan a QR code, but has to be within 300 feet of the site’s coordinates — based on the smartphone’s internal GPS — for the capture to register points.

Mr. Orejola and another munzer have developed themes for their deployed munzees. The “Local Ice Cream Konnoisseur Series,” or LICKS, features munzees hidden near ice cream stands like Swirls ‘n Scoops in Grafton and West End Creamery in Northbridge.

They’ve recently branched out to include barbeque restaurants such as Buck’s Roadside BBQ in Auburn as part of a munzee theme.

“We also hide them in parks where there’s a geocache nearby, so geocachers get more bang for the buck,” Mr. Orejola said.

But he said he’s received some resistance from geocaching organizers about placing caches along with munzees. “The folks at Geocaching (Groundspeak) consider it a competitive product, for reasons I don’t understand, because they really go hand in hand.”

Mr. Vardeman, one of Munzee’s four staff members based near Dallas, Texas, said Aaron Benzick, Munzee founder and iPhone application developer, came up with the idea for the game in 2008 when QR codes became popular. The game had to wait, however, until smartphone use and capabilities caught up.

After testing with friends and family around Prosper, Texas, Mr. Benzick and two co-founders launched Munzee July 1, 2011.

The Munzee app can be downloaded on iPhones, Androids, Windows Phones and iPads with 3G, but not on BlackBerries.

The game has spread to more than 50 countries and there’s at least one deployed munzee on every continent, including Antarctica.

“It was total word of mouth,” Mr. Vardeman said about Munzee’s growth.

Although director of business and community relations for Munzee, Mr. Vardeman has a day job as a fifth-grade math teacher.

“We all have full-time jobs,” he said.

Mr. Benzick is a Web developer and a police officer from Plano, Texas, and co-founders Scott Foster and Chris Pick are Web developers.

“We do this during the evening. It’s our passion and our love,” Mr. Vardeman said. “We’re obviously looking for it not to be part time.”

A basic Munzee registration is free, which allows the user to hunt for and capture munzees and deploy regular munzees. There is a small charge to deploy some special munzees.

Some “business munzees” can be captured at retail locations and the finder receives loyalty rewards in addition to capture points. A standard business munzee doesn’t cost the business anything but the Munzee company is considering offering products with promotional logos and other marketing services.

Jason Terho, co-owner of Twin City Fuel in Fitchburg, has deployed one of the few business munzees in the region. Munzers who scan the QR code at the office can come in for a free ice scraper, he said, although his real purpose was just to have fun and get more people interested in the game.

Mr. Terho said he hasn’t had many captures, but, “A lot of people have been asking about it. It definitely generates conversation when people walk in and see a giant QR sign on the door.”

Mr. Terho has been a munzer since May, capturing munzees up and down the East Coast. He said he liked the immediate gratification of getting points when he captures a munzee.

“My biggest reason (to do it) is to compete with my brother to see who can get the most points. It’s a brotherly competition thing.”

So far, Jason is winning.

He also thinks it’s a more healthful family pastime that sitting around watching TV.

“The kids love it and I like it because it gets them outside,” Mr. Terho said.